More De Moraes on TV

Stories By Date

syndicate

Bikini Girl, We Barely Knew You

It's Group Round Night in Hollywood -- in which the Idolettes are told at bedtime to form into cliques, rehearse until the wee hours of the morning a tune that was popular when their parents were their age, and then perform it that afternoon in the most famous theater ever built in a shopping mall -- because, of course, that's how it happens all the time in the music industry. I'm told that's how Bruce Springsteen got together with the E Street Band.

"Bikini Girl" (left) performs with her group. (Michael Becker -- Fox)

Show host Ryan Seacrest has had a whole year to prepare an especially strong Hollywood Week Group Round Cavalcade of Cliches for tonight's broadcast: "The stage is set for the tears, triumphs and tragedies," "This annual event always brought on the drama but never like this," and, our personal fave: "Some rise to the forefront but others will simply be stabbed in the back."

Tuesday night we were told 43 of the 147 Idolettes who made it to Hollywood had not survived the first round of Hollywood Week. But Wednesday night we're told there are 107 contestants and 40 had gotten the hook. There's a story there. Maybe they discovered three of the ejected are male strippers and they brought them back to feed to TMZ and the Associated Press.

But, however you do your math, there are a mess of Idolettes still performing for their lives. But what we want to see, "Idol" producers are quite certain, are not good singers but Drama Queens, starting with Bikini Girl, and Tatiana the Terrible, and also including Rose the Lovely Orphan Child, and Nathaniel the Hysterical.

Bikini Girl, aka Katrina Darrell, decides to go to bed in the middle of rehearsal because she wants to sleep, leaving the rest of her Team Diva -- oh yes, they did pick that name -- in the lurch. We see a lot of Rose the Lovely Orphan Child, aka Rose Flack, standing around dissing Bikini Girl when she might be better off rehearsing.

"If you guys keep going off key you are a bad singer!...I hate excuses!" Tatiana Del Toro lectures the group of chicks who took her in when no one else would.

Briefly, Danny "I Lost My Wife" Gokey & His BFF Jamar Rogers have found two chicks with whom to sing in perfect harmony. They're seen for the briefest of moments, rehearsing in the kitchen of the Hotel That's Next to the Most Famous Theater Ever Built in a Shopping Mall. That's all the good singing we'll see for a good long while.

"Please! We have to be tight!" Tatiana continues to screech at her group. "This is not a game to me! This mean everything to me!"

("Have you ever met Satan?" one of Tatiana's teammates asks another)

"I've been to hell and back to be here!" Tatiana wails, confirming her teammate's suspicions. She announces her teammates are going to throw her under the bus. Really? I thought a stake through the heart was the standard operating procedure. Anyway, she hops on her broom and flies over to Team Compromise, whose members include Nathaniel the Hysterical, aka Nathaniel Marshall. Team Compromise takes Tatiana in because one of its more naïve members, Blond on Top Chick, aka Kristen McNamara, says they need her. Like Hansel and Gretel need gingerbread.

But after casting an evil spell over Team Compromise, Tatiana the Terrible hops back on her broom and flies back to her first team to wreak havoc over there.

Meanwhile, the evil spell Tatiana had cast on Team Compromise is kicking in. Blond on Top Chick is trying to rest, Nancy Wilson is going postal, and Nathaniel snaps: "I tried my hardest to put my heart in it and I tried to make these girls get along!"

Later, Rose and the rest of Team Diva go looking for Bikini Girl and find her under her duvet in her bed. She won't come out because it's not yet time for her closeup. They head out without her.

But Bikini Girl finally rises and puts in her little dress and her high, high heels and her perfect makeup and trudges down to wherever it is they all are and plunks herself at the Team Diva table and tells her teammates: "You've got to teach me what I missed."

It's showtime!

Some team called White Chocolate gives a great performance; too bad we didn't get to see them rehearse. Likewise Nick Mitchell, who miraculously seems to have made it through and without his Norman Gentle get-up. That might have been interesting to see. Danny Gokey and his team are great but we already knew that.

Team Diva performs and is predictably terrible except for Jasmine Murray, from whom we heard nothing during all the Diva drama. Bikini Girl tries to play the "I have scoliosis" card, but judge Simon Cowell, who's been her enabler all along, throws her over, noting that maybe she shouldn't be wearing those high, high heels. New "Idol" judge Kara DioGuardi takes one last whack at Bikini Girl but, sadly, the American Idol Decency Police censor it.

And Tatiana? Tatiana's spell casts a pall over Team Compromise, causing Nancy Wilson to forget her lyrics. Simon even suggests the chicks tried to nuke each other during their performance. Kristen and Nathaniel survive; Nancy gets the hook and hisses something at Kristen, which is censored, on her way out.

Miraculously, all of Tatiana's team, including the she-devil herself, gets sent through to the next round. Which causes Tatiana's eyes to begin spinning around in her head while she screams:

"Thank you Jesus! Thank you so much! Thank you everyone who is a part of this show! I love you so much! You all make this a part of me! You are all a part of me! I will take each and every one of you in my heart for the rest of my life!"

Comments

Can't believe (but very happy) Bikini Bimbo got tossed last night. God help the man who marries her. Simon is now the King of Snark with his high heel remark. And Kara DID get in the last (bleeped) word.

Tatiana is the next one who needs to get bounced. When she was giving her solo performance after making it through to the next round, I hit the mute button, pronto.

Also good to see the girl with two arms full of tattoos hit the road.

The show should have been billed "Drama Queen Night" instead of "Group Night."

Posted by: waterfrontproperty | February 5, 2009 9:05 AM

I'm also thrilled bikini bimbo is gone. Tatiana should have been right behind her - that thang can't sing and her personality needs a major overhaul. Sorry to see Rose go.

Posted by: MILW | February 5, 2009 9:53 AM

There are only two reasons to have "group week:" drama, and to see if the Idolettes can do those terrible intro group songs later in the season. Otherwise, this is a solo competition.

Rose was a victim of her team, too bad.

Posted by: wmsiii | February 5, 2009 10:03 AM

Why do they introduce us to all these people during the tryouts and then not show them? I would have liked to see the blind guy's group, the Osmand group, the woman who dumped her husband the day she auditioned. Instead, we get hours (seemed that way) of bikini girl. Way to keep a story going, producers. The people I was invested in, I don't even know if they made it to the next round.

I think there are people like me watching, who want to root for people, not just see people fall apart. But I guess I'm not the audience they are going for...

Posted by: junieb13 | February 5, 2009 10:21 AM

I totally agree, junieb13!

Posted by: MILW | February 5, 2009 10:42 AM

Tatiana gets my vote as Most Likely To Be Beaten To Death By Her "Teammates." I do feel sorry for Rose the Orphan, too-- she was a victim of her group. I also would have liked to have seen more of the other groups and a LOT less of Bikini Bimbo.

Posted by: inkydog | February 5, 2009 11:30 AM

Note to future contestants: befriend good singers who are good people too, and make sure to be close together as soon as they say: "Form groups of 3 or 4".
Haven't these people watched previous seasons?!?

Posted by: SW-DCWaterfront | February 5, 2009 12:21 PM

Mr Hodie asks, why do they make them sing in groups?

I think it is like college. I mean why did they make us take engineering physics when we were pre-med majors? Answer: to weed out those who aren't strong enough. Or it's just good fun fraternity/sorority hazing.

Despite that, I too would have liked to see more of the good singers and less of the mentally unbalanced. I was just waiting for footage of some idolette to put shaving cream onto their sleeping groupmate's hand.

Posted by: hodie | February 5, 2009 12:35 PM

"Rose was a victim of her team, too bad."
Ah, but Rose also forgot the lyrics, which Simon warned was an automatic out!

Loved Simon's comment as Bikini Girl was leaving---"She'll go far." He's probably right! We'll see her on some trashy TV show or hanging out as Paris' new BFF.

Posted by: chantooz | February 5, 2009 12:59 PM

Did they show Tatiana's original audition? I don't remember it and she has a particular kind of crazy that I think I would remember.

Hollywood week is my least favorite phase of the show. For one thing, it's very light on the Seacrest.

Posted by: pinkstate | February 5, 2009 3:18 PM

Yes, they did show Tatiana during the auditions. They did a long bit on her in fact. She had a horrid dress with a crazy train on it. They focused on her laugh for a unbearable amount of time, and Simon made fun of her when she held her hands over her heart while Simon attempted to toss her out. Her continuing to move forward shows that Idol cares as much about story lines, including the nutcase ones, as much as singing. Her entire team was dreadful, yet they all went on.

Posted by: Handsome_John_Pruitt | February 5, 2009 5:06 PM

Thanks, HJP. I forgot that I missed a night of auditions on the 20th when I tivo'ed the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball instead of AI. I'm still living in the dark ages, having to pick only one show to record in any given time slot!

Posted by: pinkstate | February 5, 2009 5:23 PM

Lisa, you nailed it -- the producers don't seem to know if this is a cheesy reality show or (as Simon likes to say) "a talent competition." I, too was frustrated by the focus on people who clearly were mediocre as singers from the first auditions (sorry, but Rose, charming as she is, was one of them). Like what happened to the teenage girl with the great voice who sang a song she'd written called "Natty" at the end of one of the auditions? What happened to the guy from Tuesday who blew Randy away with his flawless singing of a difficult Stevie Wonder song?

And if this is about talent, why DID they bring back "Group Night" which seems more like the Idol Theater of Cruelty? When they got rid of it last year I thought that was a great idea. The thing I like about this show is watching talented people perform.

But if they must do this silly Fear Factor stunt called Group Night, can't we at least see how the successful people go about putting together a good act under those conditions? I'd be much more interested to see how that happens than how the ones who fail go about failing.

The problem is, I am not entertained by watching immature, narcissistic people whose main talent is for drawing attention to themselves. But AI producers seem to think rather than separate themselves from the raft of shows out there that do focus on such people, they need to steer their show that way. It's frustrating.

Posted by: owingsmills | February 5, 2009 8:21 PM

Tatiana was so annoying that they pretty much guaranteed that she won't get very far should she make it to America voting. Vote for the Worst would be salivating over her but my guess is that she won't be getting much sympathy from the public.

Posted by: DreamOutLoud | February 6, 2009 11:37 AM

Yeah… there’s definitely something certifiably not-right with Tatiana… @_@ I mean, if that psychotic laugh of hers didn’t tip us off, her ranting, her self-centered/self-absorbed confessionals with the camera were just… absurd. I mean, does this girl actually exist in the same world/show as everyone else? If the judges are somehow blind enough to let her through to the Top 36, I hope America will just quickly give that idiot the ax ASAP…

And I agree wholeheartedly with you, Lisa—why are we so focused on the drama in this episode? I SO would’ve wanted to see more of White Chocolate and Danny and Jamar’s group. And that cute little emo boy! (remember, the one who directs youtube horror movies and always kills himself off in them? Yeah, adorable, right? :D) I wasn’t even sure he’d made it past the first round. The camera is not giving very widespread coverage this year. It seems like we spent more time focusing on the idiots who won’t possibly get through to the Top 5 than the serious competitors (hello? Adam Lambert?? Can we give the likely winner a *little* more screen time than the various no-talent freaks that are crying and wailing into the camera?)

I sure hope Idol won’t turn into a class-less reality TV show like so many others out there. Guess this is what happens when Nigel Lithgow leaves, huh?

Posted by: Kureno | February 6, 2009 12:30 PM

Apologies if I am stating the obvious, but its clear to me that they are purposefully stringing along contestants that have no chance of making the cut for entertainment purposes. Tatiana, Bikini Girl, and Norman Gentle come to mind, although Bikini Girl's latest performance was so bad that they had no choice.

I really wish they would be more strict against contestants trying to appeal their decision. Except those few cases where the contestants go psycho, it gets really old.